Somehow I always learn new things about myself through revelations I have during conversations with my Warrior Brothers.
I was having an interesting conversation, just checking up on someone I haven’t talked to in a while. He has recently been achieving good things in life like finishing his degree and he keeps moving forward, he has always been an encouraging person to know. Somehow we were talking about my confusion on why I don’t feel comfortable around large crowds after we both revealed it’s something that bothers us.
What I mentioned to him was, it’s not like I’m afraid of anyone in a physical confrontation so I was always confused why this specific thing bothered me. He also admitted that he also has no fear of confrontation and often when someone is getting a little riled up he simply stares them down and they fold and behave or leave.
He said it’s the overloading of all the conversations that seemed to get to him. I thought about that and what I had talked to someone just a day or so earlier about. I reflected earlier that we/warfighters are trained to always be on edge and alert for threatening postures, inflection of voices and overall body language because we can use those inputs, regardless if we speak the local language as a predictive indicator of a pending attack. I think what may be happening isn’t that we don’t like the noise, or possibly even the people. I believe our brains are getting too saturated with incoming data we have been trained to analyze for threat assessments and it makes your system, brain, get overloaded like a computer that’s memory is full but is still trying to process data.
Basically I had this in another conversation in which I was asked how I dealt with going to a large event where there were tons of people. I said if I noticed the event had taken precautions I recognized for safety like magnetometers, proper levels of security personnel and even event layout my brain relaxed. I thought later I was essentially freeing things my brain didn’t have to focus on once I documented those items at the event. Next I found it easier to focus on my immediate surroundings, like the small groups and those seated directly around me. Even though I don’t like talking to people, I could engage in conversation and the interaction with them allowed my brain to focus directly on those specific people the ones in my immediate threat area which almost acted like a white noise filter almost turning down the background static which had previously been a distraction taxing my senses.
I have no doubt everyone experiences things differently, but I have found that people who were engaged in direct combat often aren’t really afraid of getting hurt or even dying. The only thing anyone I have worked with closely are truly afraid of is letting your Brothers down and feeling it was your fault someone got hurt. When someone around you gets injured or dies you redouble your efforts to never allow that to happen again.
This is what I feel the Psychology field refers to when they see our behavior as Hypervigilance which is defined as a state of heightened alertness and increased awareness of one’s surroundings, often accompanied by a sense of anxiety and fear. For me I don’t think military guys associate as much with fear but more with anger and rage because that is how we are taught to react when engaging in battle. It’s definitely not normal, or what most people would consider healthy, but it’s how we survive and actually thrive in warfare.

I am always interested in talking to more of my Brothers because the more I do the more I seem to be able to peace together. That and it’s always good to see if what I see and remember about these types of things is common with others.
I have begun more and more to think sometimes we, people scarred by evil, need to look at ourselves as simply in a different realm of life than those around us. When you have been exposed to the lack of humanity and people who utterly have zero value in human life and see truly evil people including witnessing the things they have done, very few people in the western world will ever see life through our eyes. I am glad they still see life as the shining city on the hill, Camelot. But, once you know there is evil everywhere even hidden in what appears to be a normal neighborhood you always look for it.
For me, it was easier at times living in a war zone where we were trained to thrive in those chaotic environments and were allowed to react appropriately. In civil society where we are limited in our responses you can begin to feel restrained, when that happens I think it may explain why I actually have anxiety buildup in the most calm of times. But whenever an extreme situation or chaos does happen it’s like wrapping up in the most comfortable woobie because it feels like home. Ok I realize that definitely sounds sick, but there has to be something to it. What else could possibly explain guys actually feeling the pull or a deep longing to go back to war or be back in the fight? Hell, I could show you a battalion of Vets that would buy their own gear to go to War if America needed fighters.
Joy After Trauma 